THE BEST DUNKER in the world joined his teammates for practice on a recent December morning in suburban Chicago. But unlike the expansive, full-court spaces typically used by NBA players, Mac McClung’s Windy City Bulls had to share theirs with retirees in visors and knee braces. While McClung warmed up on one side, a group of seniors grunted and sweated through pickleball matches on the other.

McClung is winner of the last three NBA Slam Dunk Contests and the only player ever to win three in a row. Not even Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant or Vince Carter could make that claim.

“Oh!” an onlooker said, peeking through an opening in a room divider. “That is him!”

Windy City, of the NBA’s G League, agreed to let ESPN into practice on one condition: no video or still photos of McClung dunking the ball. It’s clear McClung’s relationship to the shot that made him world famous is a complicated one.

McClung said the memories were incredible from his historic dunk titles — flying over a Kia, hurdling Shaq, rubbing elbows with Dr. J — along with the off-court opportunities that came from them. But that’s where he thinks the benefits of his dunking fame end.

“I don’t think it has much to do with my NBA career,” McClung said.

McClung’s career has taken him from the G League to the NBA, back to the G League, back to the NBA, up, down, up and down again. Four G League clubs in five seasons. Ten NBA games for five teams during that time. McClung turned down multiple offers to play overseas.

“Millions of dollars,” he said, “… but this [NBA quest] is where my heart’s at.”

McClung, 27, has been called up twice this season — first in October with the Indiana Pacers, his first standard NBA contract. The Pacers waived him a week later. Next came a two-way with the Chicago Bulls. The team signed him a week before Friday’s start of NBA All-Star Weekend.

If he had entered this year’s dunk contest, McClung could have become the first four-time champion. He decided — before signing the Bulls contract — to bow out instead. The decision appeared to take him out of All-Star Weekend for the first time in three years, but just days before Friday’s Rising Stars game, which pits first- and second-year NBA players against G Leaguers in a mini-tournament, the Bulls named McClung as an injury replacement. He’ll be at All-Star Weekend again — this time, with the ability to show off the entirety of his game.

Still, McClung remains just a transaction away from returning to practice spaces shared with pickleball players or game venues shared with wrestling matches and rodeos. He played for Chicago on Feb. 5, scoring four points in 13 minutes. One night later, he was back with Windy City, collecting 33 points and seven assists. He has been in the G League since.

McClung is adamant that he hasn’t given up on the thing that appears to have given up on him. He lives with the frustrations, anxieties and resentment that accompany that decision, even if he won’t always admit they’re there.

“You can’t keep telling me no forever,” McClung said.

MCCLUNG’S UNLIKELY JOURNEY started in an unlikely place: Gate City, Virginia. Near the Tennessee border. Population: 2,043. “You walk outside,” McClung said, “you’re going to see multiple people you know.”

The McClungs were known through sports. McClung’s sister, Anna, was the best high school soccer player in the state. His father, Marcus, played football at Virginia Tech. McClung played football, too, but took his father aside when he was in seventh grade.

“And he said: I want to be a basketball player, and I want to be the best,” Marcus said.

One of McClung’s best friends, Zac Ervin, had been 6-foot-4 before high school. McClung watched him dunk and wanted to do it, too. He settled for touching the rim. “It was like magic,” McClung said. Between freshman and sophomore year, McClung grew from 5-7 to 6-1.

“And then probably two months, three months later, he was windmilling,” Marcus said.

By his junior year, one dunk on two defenders became an Instagram post, and that Instagram post turned into a highlight video, and those highlights went viral. McClung’s dunks were attracting millions of views on YouTube. He was featured in a spot on SportsCenter’s Top 10 plays.

“Man, honestly, those were the most insane times,” said Ervin, also McClung’s high school teammate.

His dunks also turned game nights into standing-room only events. Teachers took half-days to wait in lines four hours before tip-off, spilling out of the building. On the road, McClung was assigned a coach who served as a personal bodyguard. They planned postgame escapes, out back entrances and away from crowds. When fans did get to him, he signed autographs for an hour. One fan offered up a bra for the high schooler to sign.

“It was just surreal,” McClung said.

But fame didn’t translate into opportunity on the court. Major programs weren’t expressing much interest. “The same story of my life,” McClung said. “I wanted to go high major. I know I’m good enough.”

An AAU connection got him into a summer pickup game at Georgetown. “I don’t even think they knew who I was,” McClung said.

Hall-of-Fame center Patrick Ewing, then the coach of the Hoyas, approached McClung’s mother, Lenoir, at the gym and said her son had outplayed all his players. Ewing offered McClung a scholarship to be his point guard. McClung eventually agreed before his senior year.

As a senior, McClung broke Allen Iverson’s single-season state scoring record and JJ Redick’s single-game state finals scoring mark. Gate City won what remains its only state championship in boys’ basketball. Speaking of his reputation as a dunker in college, McClung said: “You felt like you’re under that cloud a little bit.”

He worked tirelessly on the rest of his game.

“Once he came back from Georgetown [for the summer], we were not even on a similar level at all anymore,” said Bradley Dean, McClung’s close friend and high school teammate. “He just has this look in his eye and this feeling in his heart and his soul that he’s like, ‘I’m going to make it.'”

By his sophomore year at Georgetown, McClung said he was done with dunking. He transferred to Texas Tech after that season.

He led the Red Raiders in scoring at 15.5 points per game but dunked just twice during the 2020-21 season, his only one in Lubbock.

“I stopped dunking for a year,” McClung said. “I was like, I’m not even going to dunk. Like, I don’t even want to be a part of that. And I just want to show people my game.”

MCCLUNG WAS DONE with dunking, but dunking wasn’t done with him. He was at Buffalo Wild Wings when he got the call. McClung was with his teammates on the Delaware Blue Coats, the Philadelphia 76ers’ affiliate. The voice on the other end of the phone invited him to compete in the 2023 NBA Slam Dunk Contest with two weeks’ notice.

No G League player had ever participated.

“And I was like, what?” McClung said.

Participation from superstars had waned in recent years, but the event was made famous by Dominique Wilkins, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Vince Carter. He was an undrafted, second-year player who had played on more G League teams (three) than played in NBA games (two).

McClung even predicted he’d one day win. “There’s a video of the year before,” McClung said. He told himself: I’m going to win the dunk contest, and this is how I’m going to do it. But the invitation itself came as a shock.

“I pictured myself in the NBA getting the call up for it,” McClung said.

He needed dunks worthy of the stage. A week before the contest, McClung met with a group of close friends at a gym to brainstorm. McClung then asked Dean to participate in a stunt at the event. Dean, who was playing Division II basketball at the time, missed a game so he could accompany McClung in Salt Lake City.

For his first dunk, McClung hurdled Dean, who was sitting on another man’s shoulders, grabbed the ball, tapped the glass and reverse jammed. TNT’s broadcast showed Wilkins, one of the judges, reacting with amazement. The camera then panned to wide-eyed NBA players courtside. McClung received all-perfect scores.

McClung’s second dunk was a vicious 360. After McClung landed, Kenny Smith said on TNT’s broadcast: “Welcome to the N … B … A! No more bus rides to Albuquerque!”

McClung beat the New Orleans Pelicans’ Trey Murphy III to win the contest. To seal the win, he put on his Gate City High School jersey and completed more than one full rotation before throwing it down. The NBA players courtside swarmed him. Wilkins leaned in for a hug.

McClung beamed. Afterward, NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal, walking through the bowels of the arena, said McClung had “saved” a contest that had been struggling in ratings.

McClung’s family spilled out of the stands and onto the court. Marcus was pulled in all directions. Everyone wanted an interview. Marcus looked around. His wife, Lenoir, was nowhere to be found.

He called her. No answer.

He called again. She picked up.

“I’m talking to the commissioner of basketball, Adam Silver, right now,” Lenoir said. “Please leave me alone.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Marcus said.

What did Silver say?

“We need to get your kid on a team,” Lenoir recalled. “I said, ‘I think you could do that.’ And he laughed, and we laughed.”

AFTER WINNING HIS first dunk title, McClung won a G League championship with the Blue Coats and followed by playing two games with the 76ers at the end of the regular season.

When the next season opened, McClung was on the Osceola Magic, Orlando’s affiliate, and having his best season to date. He said he considered not participating in the 2024 contest. All but one of his dunks had earned a perfect score. That would be hard to top.

But McClung’s performance also had given the contest some renewed relevance. It made it hard to say no. McClung won again in 2024. This time, the 6-foot-2 McClung leaped over the 7-1 O’Neal for the dunk that beat multi-time All-Star Jaylen Brown.

McClung returned to the G League after the win. He went on to win the league MVP in 2023-24 with Osceola, averaging 25.7 points on 51.5% shooting.

McClung faced opponents on two-way contracts. He outplayed them, and his team won games. But it was the only season of his professional career that he wasn’t called up to the NBA.

“That was a confusing year,” he said.

To win a third in 2025, McClung said he knew he would have to be more creative. For one dunk, he jumped over a Kia. For another, he slammed two balls at once, grabbing one of them from a man on a ladder. McClung went from underdog to all-time great.

“Vince Carter,” Smith said on that year’s TNT broadcast, “you are being challenged for the greatest dunker in dunk history!”

Every dunk earned a perfect score. McClung won for a third time. Wilkins and Jordan had won it twice, as had Zach LaVine and Harold Miner. Nate Robinson was the only other player to win it three times. But McClung was the first player ever to win it three times in a row.

“Our town erupted” after the first one, said Scott Vermillion, McClung’s high school coach, said. “Our jaws dropped on the third one.”

Six days after his historic win, McClung was at suburban New York’s Nassau Coliseum, a crumbling arena in its sixth decade that had been abandoned by all tenants except the G League’s Long Island Nets. He scored 25 points for Osceola.

A month after that, on March 20 last year, he was supposed to be in Portland, Maine, for Osceola’s game against the Celtics’ affiliate. The team was staying at a downtown Marriott, across from the fish pier. The bus pulled up. Osceola’s players filed off. McClung wasn’t there. He had been called up.

In the hotel lobby, Osceola’s coach, Dylan Murphy, explained McClung’s situation to ESPN. He was on a two-way contract when he was with Philadelphia, allowing him to split time between the G League and the NBA. In his first year in Orlando’s organization, when he won an MVP, he was on a contract that didn’t allow for that split. Then he returned to a two-way deal.

Murphy was a mentor to McClung. He highlighted analytics valued at the NBA level and helped McClung tailor his game to them. Murphy believed in McClung. “He just never questioned that I was an NBA player,” McClung said.

When asked last year why McClung has shuttled back and forth between the G League and the NBA, Murphy recited the crude math: “There’s 450 NBA players. There’s 90 two-way players, and there’s probably another 200 guys that are capable of being in the NBA. But there just are only so many spots.

“And if he got minutes, I’m sure he could show what he could do,” Murphy said.

WHEN THE PACERS called in late October 2025, McClung hadn’t played a competitive game in seven months. Days earlier, he was signed by the Bulls before being waived hours later and sent for another stint at Windy City. But G League training camp hadn’t opened yet.

Indiana flew McClung to Dallas, where he faced off against NBA veterans on SMU’s campus a day after the call. Indiana was hit with injuries, including to All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton, who was out for the season. This was his chance to show what he could do.

After the workout, McClung walked out of the gym and into the shower. The workout played through his head. McClung dressed and began preparing for a trip back to Chicago.

A Pacers executive stopped him. “Don’t pack your bags,” he told McClung. “Don’t leave.”

McClung called home to Gate City. He told his parents his flight back to Chicago was canceled. He had to go watch film with the Pacers.

Lenoir screamed. Marcus celebrated.

“It was one of the biggest thrills of our life,” Marcus said.

“I felt like this was his moment,” Lenoir added.

Not only would McClung stick with the Pacers, he was also signed to a standard NBA contract for the first time in his career. Two years. Non-guaranteed.

Last Oct. 29, McClung scored seven points in 12 minutes against the Dallas Mavericks. Two nights later, he scored 12 in 19 minutes against the Atlanta Hawks, looking the part of a solid NBA guard. The next night McClung didn’t get in the game against the Golden State Warriors.

“I think we knew that [the Pacers] had made up their mind,” Marcus said.

McClung made just one more appearance: two-plus minutes against the Milwaukee Bucks, lasting a week with Indiana before he was waived. “It was super tough,” McClung said.

His agent offered encouragement, but that did little to soothe the sting. Marcus and Lenoir were sad, but McClung leaned on them for support.

“I was embarrassed,” he said.

But McClung said he’d keep knocking on the NBA’s door until someone answered.

He went back to the G League.

On the day McClung was cut, his father texted ESPN to say he was worried.

“He’s [tough] as hell,” Marcus wrote. “But this might be different.”

He later added by phone: “We’ve had lows before. This was just harder. ​​I never thought he was going to give up on his dream. I didn’t know how he was going to recover mentally.”

MARCUS LEANED BACK against his kitchen counter in Gate City. It was January, and his son has yet to be summoned back to the NBA. He wanted to know why.

The father tells a story: In 2023, after McClung won his first dunk title, then the G League championship, averaging 32.5 points in the series, Marcus called an NBA scout. He wanted to know what else his son had to do to get in the league full-time. The scout told Marcus that McClung needed to improve his three-point shooting to near 40%.

“Well, Mac shot 47%” in the season that just ended, Marcus said with a sigh.

ESPN’s Bobby Marks, who talked to front office personnel from three NBA teams about McClung, reports that each said McClung needs to be a more consistent perimeter shooter. Despite ranking in the top-two G League scorers, and scoring 40 on some nights, McClung is shooting a career-low 33% from the three, down from his 39.3% career average.

“Do they know what his [career] percentage is?” Marcus asked.

The teams also told Marks that McClung’s size also works against him. But teams love his speed and, especially, his leadership — his ability to be a good teammate.

But what McClung’s known for — jumping over cars and retired centers — isn’t a prerequisite for NBA success.

At the dining room table in Gate City, Lenoir folded her hands and leaned forward. “The stigma of being a hoopla, internet sensation is hard to shake, I guess,” she said. “I think people want to define him as that.

She paused.

“Not here, but maybe the NBA wants to define him that way. I don’t know.”

GATE CITY IS a place where kids miss football workouts to bail hay. It’s also a place where McClung went viral on Instagram for mind-bending dunks. The town loves him because he’s one of them — comfortable in the middle seat in economy class — but also because he’s not.

Marcus, a juvenile judge, once explained to a truant child what detention could look like.

“I said, ‘It’s terrible, and you won’t get to see your family. Do you have any questions for me?” Marcus recalled. “And he goes, ‘Yeah, are you Mac’s dad?'”

In interviews with ESPN over the past year, McClung said used to take it personally when people labeled him as a dunker. In college, he didn’t want to dunk. But now, as a professional, he loves to do it again.

“I’ve learned as a man to embrace things and appreciate them,” he said. “That was a younger me trying to be rebellious.”

His dunk-contest wins may not have helped his NBA career, but proceeds from his school’s sales of his contest-famous high school jersey funded a new floor with fresh paint in Gate City. A Puma contract, signed in 2023, has led to new uniforms and shoes for players at his old high school. This year, Marcus said Puma will unveil a McClung shoe for the first time. They’ll make just 50 pairs, available only at All-Star Weekend.

On January 13, a sign went up in front of Gate City High School: “Gate City. Home of Mac McClung. Three Time NBA Slam Dunk Champion.” An older, outdated version sits in Marcus and Lenoir’s basement. The new one is down the street from a mural of McClung jumping over a car, painted on a retaining wall near Sam’s Auto Service.

On January 23, he played in a bingo-hall-basketball arena for a G League game. Then there was the Feb. 5 game with the Bulls, one of the glamour brands in sports.

He has visceral memories of his basketball career. And they’re not all from dunk contest wins. They’re from the times he has been cut, the wounds deeper each time.

“You feel that pain for a day and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh,'” McClung said.

It seems that fewer people each time believe his dream of a full-time NBA spot will be realized, meaning there are more people for McClung to prove wrong.

“But then I don’t know, it almost excites me.”